About Heroes
by Blanc Casse
Summary: Something happens during a fight and it leaves Michiru... a little off balance. Fair warning this is pretty dark and ansgty. Haruka x Michiru. Language. Violence.


**AN** - This is a little dark and a little angsty. I hope you enjoy it, please let me know in the reviews if so! ;) Also, I don't own Sailor Moon. This should be quite obvious, yes?

Thank you for reading!

**Warnings** - Angst, Language, Violence

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><p>Some nights were easier than others. I craved the action, the adrenaline rushing though my veins like wisps of fire, the feel of my hands crackling with power, the blessed static of silence in my head. Those nights I didn't question the fight, the motives, the end goal and what achieving it will mean. For the world, for the Senshi. For me. Just parry, strike, turn, dodge, jump, kick. Simple, ruthless action and reaction, drilled into me by training such a long time ago I barely remember, in another life and on another world. I let the energy engulf me and transform me and I am just a vessel. Water always needed a vessel and in that respect I was made magnificent. I was made to fight first and question later or not question at all and even though Earth's gravity is different from Neptune's, my training always prevails. It's only my head that can tell the difference, only my mind that remembers those times. My Earth born body has never known anything except the pull of this particular ball of dust, it fights with the tools at hand and it fights well. Those nights I took in the smell of the streets and the smell of the enemy, the sounds of people living and arguing, making love or watching tv in the apartments and houses around us as we try to be one step ahead in the war. Always one step ahead and then two backwards.<p>

Other nights were... more difficult. A hellish swirl of blood and gore and screams that left me sickened by all the death. Because make no mistake, under the nice clothes and the soft voices, we are killers and there are nights when I feel uglier, bloodier and more grotesques than any of the so called monsters we have to fight. You might argue that the Heart Snatchers are evil, that they belong to people who wish to conquer us, that they're just mindless, magic-made creatures of little complexity. But evil, in my experience, is often a matter of perspective. And just because a creature is less developed than you are, is no reason to kill it. As for being made by magic... We use magic on a daily basis. It runs in our veins and instead of being something to distinguish _us _from _them_, it is instead something to connect us. The Senshi are all made by magic. These creatures... they walk, they talk, they think albeit in a limited, narrow sort of way, they feel pain... it's hard not to wonder exactly what it is we're killing every other night. Yes, some nights... all this death started to get to me.

I stared out the window of the car Setsuna was driving without really registering which way we were going. Obvious answer would have been home, but sometimes Setsuna took us on a little detour before dawn just for the hell of it. Never for long and never very far, just ... around. I think she enjoys the driving and the music really. There's something hypnotic about the speed and the darkness beyond the headlights that always makes the road ahead seem endless. I never minded and I never asked her for a reason. I liked it well enough and I didn't think I wanted to know exactly what it was she was thinking about when she was so deep inside herself.

Tonight I'd be content if she never stopped at all and just kept driving into the ocean. Which would of course be rather stupid and suicidal, but for some reason my mind had started developing this habit of mulling over the strangest questions. It's not like I want to die or anything like that, but I think about the feel of sunlight on my skin and the immensity of the ocean in the cool morning light, the way the rays filter though autumn leaves in the forest and I feel like I've lost something important along the way.

Tonight... had been a nightmare.

When had I become this person? I hadn't started out this way, had I? When had this happened?

"Michiru... we're here."

"Go on ahead, I'll be right behind you."

She hesitated for a second and I turned my head away. I heard a soft sigh, but she got out of the car and left me in the parking lot, in the basement of our house and I didn't move.

When had this happened?

She'd left the key in the ignition, like we always do at home. I turned it half-way and started the radio. I got nothing but static. I knew you couldn't get anything down here, I don't even know why I bothered, really. I looked at the little blue screen and the bands that were moving round and round and round, trying to find a station, finding nothing, starting over again. I turned it off.

After a while Haruka came down and looked at me with that concentrated, determined look of hers. I looked back and I don't know what she saw in my eyes but it made her jaw tense.

"Are you ok?" Soft, concerned words.

I didn't know what to answer so I said nothing.

"I'm going to open the door..." Another look in her eyes now, a caution in her movements, like she was trying not to scare off the wild animal. I hate it when people look at me like that. Like I'm about to brake down and cry or something... like I'm fragile.

Her hands smelled like metal from the weights she had probably been lifting in the gym just before we arrived and there was a faint trace of vanilla. Hotaru's cookies, most likely. The thought made me want to smile, but I don't think I managed to do a very good job of it. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against her touch. It was amazing how much we'd started to crave small gestures like this in the past year. It made me feel needy and sappy, but I couldn't shake it off. Didn't even feel like trying anymore, really. Sometimes it was just enough to be in the same room with her. Haruka would have her headphones on, making playlist after playlist and I'd be reading some book or watching tv and it would feel like everything was all right in the world. Which is preposterous, of course.

Preposterous and stupid and dangerous and it scared me because it felt like I was being lulled into a false sense of security. Nights like this one, when everything seemed so screwed up, priorities so jumbled, that panic threatened to choke me and I could imagine I'd been thrown into some other dimension and I'd never be able to find my way back home again.

"Talk to me, baby."

"Nothing to say." I mumbled in her palm, rubbing my cheek against it and I held it in place, like putting gauze on a wound and knowing it would keep the rest of the world away from the painful spot.

"Do you think maybe you can get out of the car?"

"In a minute..."

It really took more like fifteen and then another ten to get to our room. I felt like I was moving through cotton candy.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"I'm just... worried, that's all..."

I sighed. She was going to pick at this and pick and pick until I gave in, if it took her days to get it out of me.

"I almost got Setsuna killed tonight."

Which was true enough if not the exact source of the problem.

"I don't think that's very accurate..."

"Well, you're my girlfriend, you think I shoot rainbows out of my ass. You're opinion doesn't count."

"Right." she smirked

Except of course, it did. More than anything, really. I didn't want her to think I was weak, or a coward, that I'd lost my nerve, or that I was this broken shadow of the warrior I used to be. I didn't think I could stand it to have her look at me with pity. Or worse, with contempt. It would have killed me. And I've already covered how stupid and dangerous that line of thinking was. I should've cared about doing my job, protecting the Princess, the world as we knew it, the peace. That's what I should have been dedicating my life to. Not Haruka. I felt a cold shiver run down my spine and she held me tighter.

"You didn't get Setsuna killed. Every fight is dangerous. There are always risks, you've told me this from day one. You did everything you could tonight."

Except I didn't. And even if Setsuna didn't know it, I did.

"I froze." I whispered and almost wanted to smack myself because, what the hell was wrong with me, I thought I wasn't going to talk about it.

"Shit happens."

I almost laughed. Hysterically. Almost.

"You did what you had to and that's all that matters."

And there it was, right there. The crux of the matter. I went completely still and felt my chest tighten and my eyes burning, tears threatening to escape. Yes. I did do what I had to. The creature had somehow managed to land a knock-out kick to Setsuna's jaw and then get close enough to me that I had to fight her hand to hand. She was powerful, fast and vicious even if her body was small and somehow split into twins in the middle of the fight. Fighting one of her had been difficult, but two... two took a while. I was able to knock one unconscious and was preparing to deal a final blow to the other one when she looked up at me, bruised and battered and tear stricken and begged me to spare her. She looked like a twelve year old and she had blood on her face from where I'd split her lip open with an elbow, she was holding her cracked ribs with one arm and she fucking... _begged_ me. So I hesitated. I hesitated for one whole second but then I looked her in her eyes that were as green as spring buds and I killed her anyway.

I'd completely forgotten about the twin and if Setsuna hadn't come around enough to defend herself she'd probably be dead now because all I could do was stand there in the middle of the fucking park and stare at the black crater the Deep Submerge had created.

"Michiru..." Haruka whispered in my ear and I honestly couldn't remember how we'd ended up on the bed, with me in her lap, cradled like the most precious thing in the universe or when I'd started shivering so badly that I couldn't talk. "It's going to be alright."

And I wanted to believe her, I did, but I just didn't have it in me anymore. She rocked me and petted my hair and I let her because some nights... some nights even killers needed to feel loved.


End file.
